


A Theory of Brotherhood & Spontaneous Parthenogenesis

by limerental



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Love Confessions, Cuddling, Discussions of alien reproduction, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied Thor/Loki - Freeform, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Or Is It?, Post-Infinity War, Pregnancy Scare, Protective Thor, Utter ridiculousness, ignores endgame, not mpreg, soft thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 11:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19927318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limerental/pseuds/limerental
Summary: "Thor finally managed to flip his phone open and navigate to the messages folder, squinting at the tiny screen in his big hands.Loki's message read:help meIt was followed by the name and address of a hospital and nothing more."Or the one where Loki gets some very odd test results and Thor is a big-hearted dumbass about it





	A Theory of Brotherhood & Spontaneous Parthenogenesis

**Author's Note:**

> yes, this is loki mpreg adjacent and yes, i feel great Shame that it has come to this but alas, I had a good time and that's all that matters. this concept came to me in a dream and i don't know if that makes it better or worse.

In the midst of his daily stroll along the harbor, the sea lapping gently against the shore, a fresh breeze flapping the flags on the newly built cabins on the water's edge, a myriad of Asgardians bustling along around him, Thor received a text message from Loki. 

It took him a few moments to remember how exactly to work his mobile phone as he fumbled it from his pocket.

In the month or so since their uninterrupted journey to Midgard in the wake of Asgard's destruction and the successful establishment of New Asgard, Thor had not heard much from his brother. 

Loki, utterly bored with the Norwegian countryside after less than a week, had gotten Thor's blessing to travel elsewhere if he wished. Thor had been reluctant to see him go, but that he had spoken to Thor about it at all and not simply disappeared into the night meant that Thor couldn't say no.

Of all places to live, he had chosen New York City, perhaps simply for the irony of it. 

Their refugee vessel was nearly not allowed to enter Earth's orbit due to Loki's presence on board, the tension eased only thanks to choice words from Banner, whose judgment (when not green) many world authorities and defenders of earth trusted.

To Loki's chagrin and Thor's amusement, hardly anyone in the city ever recognized him as the monster that had leveled half of Manhattan. It was not the sort of city that gave too much of a shit which of their neighbors was actually a thousand or so year old alien refugee.

Thor finally managed to flip his phone open and navigate to the messages folder, squinting at the tiny screen in his big hands.

Loki's message read:

_help me_

It was followed by the name and address of a hospital and nothing more.

Storm clouds began to brew out at sea, and the wind picked up. Thor spared little time in retrieving Stormbreaker from his cabin and disappearing in a shock of light.

Half an instant later, he touched down with a crack of thunder at the front entrance of the aforementioned hospital. A gaggle of orderlies on their smoke break gaped at him as he stormed inside.

The receptionist was most helpful in locating his brother in a timely fashion, incensed as she was by a vaguely hostile thunder god. Thor took the stairs to the fourth floor three at a time and skidded down hallways, finally coming to a stop at the correct room, and charging inside, Stormbreaker raised high.

“Hi,” said Loki, from where he sat primly in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a monitor. He wore a pale blue hospital gown, and his unruly, dark hair was slightly mussed, like he had been sleeping.

“Are you in danger?” Thor sputtered, red-faced, little shocks of lightning pulsing down his arms. “What has happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Loki said with a touch of annoyance. “I'm _fine_. But they're not allowing me to leave.”

“Not allowing you to--?” Thor stared. “What did you do?”

Loki's response was interrupted by the arrival of a severe-looking nurse.

“He fainted,” she said, moving to fuss with his monitor. “They found him passed out cold in the middle of Central Park.”

“I did not _faint_ ,” Loki said. “I simply over-extended myself.”

“Doing what?” Thor asked.

“He was jogging,” interrupted the nurse.

“ _Jogging?_ ”

Loki sighed, closing his eyes as though he was seconds from throttling someone.

“I was not jogging,” he said carefully. “I was perfecting a magical working. I over-extended myself _magically_ and I--”

“He fainted,” said the nurse.

“ _Yes_ ,” Loki hissed. “You are an absolutely foul woman, you know?”

“Well,” said the nurse, who was very used to being called all manner of things by unruly patients. “Your test results should be back any time now.”

“I told you,” said Loki. “I don't actually need--”

“What test results?” Thor interrupted. He strode across the room to take a seat at Loki's bedside, little charges of static still rippling across his fingertips.

“We got some odd readings on his blood test when he came in,” the nurse said. She reached to check his IV, and Loki jerked his hand away from her grasp. He had the look of someone who had snatched the needle out a dozen times and would do so again if need be.

“Odd... how?”

Before the nurse could answer, she was called away to another matter that needed her attention, and Thor leaned close to Loki, aware of how little privacy there was here.

“Loki, what's going on?” he asked. “Why haven't you just poofed out of here?”

“I'm very heavily sedated,” Loki deadpanned. “I am conscious only through sheer force of will.”

“Ah,” said Thor. “So, what, I'm expected to... throw you over my shoulder and make a run for it?”

“In essence,” said Loki.

“But what if something is truly wrong with you?”

“You trust Midgardian doctors to determine that? If there's something wrong, I'll determine that myself when I leave here. Now if you would just hurry up and--”

Just then, a man who must be the doctor breezed in through the door, staring down at the tablet in his hands.

“Well, Mrs. Odinson, congratulations! According to these numbers you are certainly pregnant. We have a number of great resources that I would be happy to direct you to if you-- oh.” 

The doctor looked up to find two Norse gods gaping at him.

“Perchance could you please repeat that?” Loki asked, looking strained.

“Odinson?” said Thor. “ _Pregnant?_ ”

“Ah, well,” said the doctor. “I would say there has been a mistake, but this is apparently the second test with a new sample.” 

“I'm not pregnant,” said Loki. “Clearly.”

“Well, Mr. Odinson,” the doctor said, somewhat flustered. “There are... other explanations. Cancer, for one. A tumor in the prostate or the testicles could produce these hormone levels.”

“I'll have you know my prostate is perfectly healthy,” said Loki. Truthfully, he wasn't well-versed enough on human anatomy to know if he actually had one of those or an equivalent. “And my testicles are of no concern of yours.”

“Can you get cancer?” Thor whispered to Loki. Asgardian healers had cured cancer ages ago, but he often had to force himself to remember that Loki was not an Asgardian.

“Definitely not. I would know.”

“Oh and what's a prostate?” asked Thor at a louder volume. The doctor smiled tightly at them both, clearly assuming he wasn't being serious.

“Ok, nothing to worry about quite yet. Sit tight here for a bit longer. More tests to run,” the doctor said. “You'll be out in a jiffy.” And he swept out the door with a swish of his lab coat.

An uneasy silence fell, and the brothers stared at one another.

“Well,” said Thor finally. “Could you be pregnant?”

“ _How_ exactly?”

“Spontaneous parthenogenesis.”

“With what anatomy?” asked Loki, saying nothing of the apparent assumption that he didn't have sex and therefore could not possibly have conceived of a child through anything but asexual means (to say nothing of the fact that he wasn't actually currently having sex and had not had sex in a long time). “I don't exactly have the right parts.”

“No one knows how jotnar actually reproduce right? They could lay eggs for all you know.”

“Are you saying that you think I'm going to... lay eggs?”

“I don't know, maybe you have a pouch somewhere! I haven't checked.”

“I'm not a _marsupial_ , Thor,” Loki said. He was not sure whether to be more appalled that Thor assumed he (Loki) possessed a pouch for raising young or that Thor seemed to believe that kangaroos laid eggs.

“Well they're made of some sort of icy rocks,” Thor said. “Maybe they just--” He made a complicated series of hand gestures meant to represent two rock-like beings knocking together and a pebble falling off with an audible plunk.

“Thor,” Loki said. “Do I look like I'm made of rocks?”

“Er... no,” said Thor. “Though I assume that's a glamour. You can't have been born looking like an Odinson.”

With a start, Loki realized that Thor had never actually seen him in Jotun form. This was the most they had spoken about his heritage at all.

“Jotnar are not made of rocks,” said Loki. “They're not even a little bit made of rocks.”

Thor looked at Loki sitting up in bed, a little mussed but otherwise normal. He didn't _look_ pregnant, though he wasn't certain what that would look like. There was meant to be a glow, of sorts. The only possible glow Loki had was due to how very pale his skin was.

Time in the sterile hospital room passed slowly. Loki sat ramrod straight in bed, eyes sometimes going a bit crossed (the sedation not having worn off at all yet), and Thor slumped in the plastic hospital chair, half-dozing. 

“If I'd known you were going to just sit here,” said Loki. “I would have called someone else.”

“What, like who? Who do you know that would bust you out of a hospital at a moment's notice?”

“Clearly no one! Seeing as I'm still here!”

Loki returned to moody concentration on being conscious, and Thor flopped back in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

“Hang on,” he said after a long stretch of silence. “Am I the father?” Loki choked, forgetting briefly how his lungs worked.

“ _What?_ ” he sputtered. “Why in the Nine Realms would you assume that?”

“I don't know. Just a question.”

“Thor,” Loki said in a very severe tone. “It's important to me that you answer this. Do you know where babies come from?”

“I'm not an idiot, Loki!” Thor said, and Loki made a face. That did not, as such, answer his question. “I just thought-- what with you being a--”

“We've been through this already. Reproduction in my case likely does not actually involve smacking together until babies fly off.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Thor. “We have shared a bed quite a few times in the past months.” 

The first time was the night after the whispered promise of _I'm here_ and then every so often afterward on cold nights as they traveled through bleak space on the crowded Statesman. Though not since they had arrived on Midgard. There had been little time for rest at all, and then, Loki had asked to go elsewhere and slipped out of his life again, easy as that.

“But not _shared a bed_ shared a bed,” said Loki. Thor stared blankly at him. “There was no-- We have never-- Thor, please, give me any sort of sign that you know where babies come from. _Please_.”

“We haven't known one another in a carnal manner.”

“Nevermind, I take it back, please pretend you don't know where babies come from so I don't ever have to hear you say something that terrible again.”

“Point is, you don't actually know how it works for you,” said Thor. “What if touch is enough? What if emotional intensity-- or I mean--”

“Emotional-- _ugghh_ ,” Loki groaned rubbing between his eyes. “I'm very tired of this, Thor. If you would just help me out of here so we can both get on with our lives, that would be excellent.”

His words seemed to have forced something contemplative into Thor's expression. Oh no.

“You know... we could,” said Thor, his face taking on a softness that Loki knew all too well, eyes flickering down to Loki's flat stomach.

“Oh no.”

“We could raise the child together. I mean, I could help you.”

“Thor, do not--”

“I would enjoy being a father, I think,” he said. “I do need an heir eventually, after all.”

He lifted a hand as though to touch his stomach, and Loki's entire being bristled.

“Thor Odinson, if you come any closer with that hand, I will chew it off.”

The two women at the nurse's station looked up from their computers at the sound of a vicious spat coming from a nearby room. One glance at the chart of the room's occupant had the both of them thinking better of intervening. 

When the doctor entered a little while later, accompanied by a handful of senior doctors, Thor sat a bit away from Loki, cradling his hand.

“After great deliberation,” said the first doctor, squinting at his tablet. “We have discovered what's wrong with you.”

There was a pause, where both the brothers stared at the gaggle of doctors.

“ _And?_ ” said Loki with a sharpness that caused them all to flinch at once.

“Well as it turns out,” one of the elder doctors said, also fiddling with a tablet.

“You aren't even a little bit human.”

“The readings could be anything.”

“Sorry for the misunderstanding.”

“Very likely aren't pregnant or sick at all.”

“Utterly shocking,” Loki deadpanned.

“Right then,” said Thor, standing with a dramatic stretch. “We're fine to take off? He's all good?” The doctors nodded as one. 

Loki gave an indignant squeak as he was suddenly dragged out of bed and over Thor's shoulder. 

“Thor, I'm still very much attached to things!” he shouted, and Thor sheepishly set him back down so the monitor attachments and IV could be removed. And then scooped him back up in the same manner, ignoring all sounds of protest.

“Thank you for your time, doctors,” said Thor. “Sorry about Loki. He's not so bad really, just a bit testy sometimes, you know--”

“Thor!” 

“Alright, we're going!”

Rather than go down all those stairs again, Thor shoved open the balcony door and lifted Stormbreaker with the arm that wasn't holding Loki flopped against his shoulder and sped away into the sky, leaving the flabbergasted swarm of doctors behind them.

*

“I would have, you know,” Thor said, after. 

They sat in the park beneath the shade of a rippling willow tree, waiting for the sedation to wear off further. Thor had taken advantage of Loki's lack of coordination to hold him close to his body as they leaned against the cool trunk together. Loki allowed the closeness for now, his head pillowed on Thor's chest, one arm low across his soft belly. 

“Would have what?” he mumbled, knowing he would regret enabling Thor to continue the conversation.

“I would have helped you out. If you really were with child, that is.”

“Not necessary,” said Loki. “I would have managed.”

“You wouldn't have needed to. We both know what it's like to have a shitty, absent father,” said Thor. 

“Thor, you wouldn't be the _father_ of any spawn of mine. We're brothers, you would be--” 

“You still think so? Brothers?”

Thor's heart did a kind of flip flop thing, and Loki felt it happen, pressed up against him as he was. He flushed, glad that from this angle Thor could not see his face.

“Of course,” said Loki, his exhaustion taking the edge from his voice. If he were not so full of drugs perhaps he would have denied it, but as it was, he didn't have the energy to keep Thor at arm's length. “Of course, we are.”

“We could have stayed here if you wanted. To raise the child.”

“What, in the park?”

“In the city, Loki.”

“And leave your people behind?”

“They could come too. We'd rent a whole skyscraper. Or just float Asgard above the buildings.”

“Yes, I'm sure the humans would be very amenable to that.”

“I could not live with myself if I let you do it alone. Let a child grow up without a father.”

“But--”

“I would father your children, Loki,” said Thor with a solemn sincerity that did little to assuage the utter ridiculousness of that statement. Loki felt the distinct desire to either be swallowed up by the ground immediately or throttle Thor half to death.

“Thor, for the last time,” Loki said. “Fathering children _generally_ involves mutual copulation. Fornication, if you will. Physical intimacy. Sex.”

“And?”

“Brothers, Thor,” said Loki in a tight, small voice. “We're brothers.”

“Has your time with the mortals made you forget our history?” Thor asked with amusement. “Blood relation of any sort has never been a barrier to love for many Asgardian rulers.”

“Love,” said Loki, very quietly. Such a word had not been spoken between them in a very long time. He had once used it freely and to any who asked. _I love Thor more dearly than any of you,_ he had said.

“Yes,” said Thor. “Of course.”

He dropped his head to rest his cheek against Loki's hair and spent a hushed moment simply listening to them breathe together, stroking small circles with his thumb on Loki's arm as he held him snug against his side.

“Come home, brother,” Thor said, remembering the last time he had voiced that sentiment to him in this city, in far different circumstances. How much time had passed since then. How little time at all. 

“New Asgard isn't home,” Loki said, voice more and more groggy with sleep.

“Home isn't a place,” Thor said, pressing a kiss to Loki's messy hair. “It's a person.”

And so, together, they went home.

*

“So what was the magical working you were doing? When you fainted?”

“Oh, something very complicated. You wouldn't understand.”

“No?”

“Yes, highly involved. Required a lot of skill and concentration.”

“I see. Care to elaborate?”

“No. A sorcerer never spills his secrets.”

“That's human magicians, Loki.”

“I couldn't possibly explain it to you. Your minuscule mind would not be able to apprehend the complexity of--”

“ _Loki._ ”

“Fine! Fine, I was _jogging_. You are the worst, and I hate you.”

“No, you don't.”

“Hmph.”

And he really, really didn't.

*

Two months later found Loki puking for the third morning in a row in their shared bathroom, Thor leaning against the doorway.

“You want to revisit how Jotun reproduction and anatomy works then?” asked Thor with the smuggest shit-eating grin imaginable. 

He spent the next twenty minutes ducking bathroom products and implements, laughing all the while.

**Author's Note:**

> i physically can't write a sequel to this because if i have to add "loki mpreg fanfiction" to my list of sins I will be dragged immediately to hell and it will be loki's fault
> 
> also be thankful i didn't go with the working title of "loki gets bred (or does he)"


End file.
